


Born of Fury

by JavierDjarin



Series: Enigma Rising [2]
Category: Pedro Pascal - Fandom, Star Wars, The Mandalorian
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Smut, Strong Language, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-13 00:02:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29767644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JavierDjarin/pseuds/JavierDjarin
Summary: It’s been several weeks since Nella’s death, and Din still hasn’t properly dealt with it. He’s grown colder and harsher ever since. Anyone that has crossed him or the kid was met with the same fate: a blaster shot through the skull. Karga and Cara tell him he needs to move on, but he refuses to forget her, keeping her pendant close to his heart and clutching it every night he’s able to sleep. Who is he kidding? He doesn’t sleep anymore; especially if he still hears her voice crying out to him in the middle of the night through the dark void.Little does he know, that’s Nella. She’s crying out for help as the Imperials run excruciating tests on her and interrogate her to no end about the Mandalorian. What they don’t know is they’ve made Engima more powerful, more deadly than they’d ever intended. And if she’s ever able to get free, they will rue the day they separated her from her family.
Relationships: Din Djarin/Nellanna Jissard (FemOC), Din Djarin/Original Female Character(s)
Series: Enigma Rising [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2153778
Comments: 4
Kudos: 2





	Born of Fury

**Author's Note:**

> All Mando'a translations can be found at the bottom of each chapter.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nella learns who is really pulling the strings behind her capture. Din calls an old friend and tells him about the things he’s been hearing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It’s back!!! Book 2 of Enigma Rising is here, and it’s going to be another ride! If you haven’t read Book 1: Born of Fire, check it out first. It introduces Nella and other characters I’ve created for this story. Translations are at the bottom. Please let me know what you think!!

She gasped, sitting up in her cell. Leaning forward, grabbing her waist. The burning had finally stopped, but the pain still lingered. Tears streamed down her face as she looked around the cold, industrial room. She was completely alone. “Din,” she whispered in a silent prayer, “please help me.” 

There would be nights where she swears she’s on the Razor Crest, next to him, only to wake up in this same place. She could still feel his arms around her, holding her close, begging her not to leave him as her life faded. The next thing she knew, she’d woken up in a sterile medical bay surrounded by doctors and technicians in awe that she survived. Her veins burned so badly that she just knew her body was on fire. Dr. Pershing was there monitoring her, asking questions, taking notes, and injecting more of that serum into her body. It was a pain like she’d never felt, but when it was all over, she felt stronger. She could hear things outside of her cell clear as day, feel the energy of the troopers standing just outside of her door, and almost sense Din’s grief at night. 

His heartbreak was the worst, but most importantly, she felt how cold he’d become. She had no way to reach out to him, tell him where she was or that she was alive. Unless she was able to escape this prison, she would never see him or her foundling again. Nella felt more tears stream down her cheeks as she laid back against the poor excuse for a pillow on her bed and closed her eyes. She played back the last time they were wrapped up in each other, when she’d seen his face for the first time: 

> _He rested his forehead on hers and smiled. “You have the most beautiful eyes,” she whispered, “and I never want to stop looking at them.”_
> 
> _He smiled. “You can see them whenever you want, Cyar’ika.” He rolled over onto his side and pulled her to his chest. “They’re yours, along with the rest of me.”_

Another crack formed in her heart. _If only I would have listened to you,_ she thought, _stayed with you like I’d promised._ Now, she was subject to horrific and painful tests ranging from more serum to physical tests that left her exhausted. She lifted her shirt to look at the scar on her stomach. The burned areas around the puckered flesh made it look worse than it actually was. It was a good six or seven inches of her abdomen that Gideon had destroyed. Her organs had been rapidly repaired, thanks to whatever they injected her with. All that was left was the scar on her body and her soul. She ran her hand over it, believing she was no longer beautiful. Din wouldn’t want to look at her with the lights on, feel the damaged flesh against his perfect soft skin. She rolled over on her side and tucked her knees closer to her. 

Closing her eyes again, she let out a few breaths. She’d learned that if she relaxed herself, she could see Din again; almost like a vision. She let her mind run rampant through the stronghold, across the lava fields, between the stars until she’d found him. This time she saw him sitting in the hold, the kid was eating out of the trays they’d bought him. She felt a smile creep across her face when she realized Din was sticking to the diet she’d made for him. Occasionally, the kid would look up at Din with big, sad eyes while Din stared ahead at his bunk; no doubt remembering her. “Din,” she whispered again, “Din, I’m here.”

He stiffened and looked down to the kid, who was looking around the ship. This was the first time she’d realized he could hear her, and the kid could sense her. “Din,” she cried out loud, “come find me, ner kar’ta.”

“Nell?” she heard him whisper in a cracked voice through his modulator. 

She sat up with a gasp again when she felt something shock her chest. Peering down at her was a trooper holding a prod to her heart. “Get up,” he said through the helmet. 

Nella glared up at the helmet, refusing to move. As hard as it was, she still tried to put up a fight. Resist. “Fuck you,” she said.

She screamed in pain as another shock went through her body. It felt like thousands of hot needles were stabbing her all at once. Her heart raced faster than it ever had, trapping her breath in her chest. When the trooper released the trigger, she fell limp against her bed. “Get up,” he ordered again.

Her breathing was labored as she slowly stood. The trooper placed cuffs on her wrists and forced her to walk in front of her. “Your ghost wants to see you,” he said.

She frowned and moved forward, stumbling each time the trooper shoved her to turn. She clenched her teeth together and growled. They stopped outside of a large metal door that slid open and revealed an office that obviously belonged to Dr. Pershing. The office chair was turned facing the three large windows that overlooked a view of the lava fields. As the door closed behind her, the chair spun around and revealed exactly what the stormtrooper had promised: a ghost. “No,” she whispered, eyes wide with horror. “How?”

The woman across from her stood. Her tall, lithe body looked picture perfect in her Imperial suit. She looked the same as the last time Nella saw her - just like their mother. She approached her youngest sister and circled her, taking in the sight. “You’ve certainly grown up, Nellie,” she said in her usual soft, cool voice.

Nella was still having a hard time accepting who was standing in front of her. “K-kiara?”

“Live and in the flesh,” she grinned, stopping in front of her with her arms outspread. 

“But how?” her throat was dry, making her voice crack.

“My men were good, weren’t they?” she laughed. “We orchestrated my death so perfectly that you actually believed I was dead.”

A tear slid down her cheek as she remembered seeing her oldest sister dead in the doorway. The screams of her parents soon filled her memory as she relived the worst night of her life. She would never forget the look on her mother’s face as her life faded from her eyes. “Mama, Papa…”

“Traitors to the Empire,” she spat, “and they dragged my impressionable sisters in with them. I wanted to save you, I really did. But, you were too young, and honestly a liability at that point.” She reached forward and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “You were never supposed to escape, Nella.”

She felt a rage burn deep in her chest. “ _They_ weren’t the traitors! You were. You abandoned your family for a cause that crumbled anyway!”

Kiara seethed and slapped her hard enough that she fell to the ground. She picked her up by her shirt. “The Empire will rise again, and _you’re_ going to help me.”

The door opened. “Director Vane,” a corporal interrupted, “I’m sorry to interrupt, but Gideon is sending you a transmission. He says it’s urgent.”

She nodded and tossed Nella into a chair across from the desk. She pressed a button that brought up Gideon’s hologram. “Vane,” he growled, “I’m growing impatient.”

She rolled her eyes. “She’s in here now. You’re interrupting my interrogation,” she calmly replied.

He huffed. “She’s useless to us,” he added, “intel suggests he took out Gor Koresh and his entire squad before heading off planet. We have a starting point. Find him.” 

They saw him lean forward and switch off his holocom and disappear. Nella glared at her sister. There were so many questions rolling around in her head that she didn’t know where to start. “Vane?” 

Kiara grinned. “Yep. Don’t worry, I wasn’t dumb enough to marry the bastard. I just wanted to shed the old name, one that wasn’t so tarnished.”

She tensed. “He’s dead now,” she seethed, “I took the liberty of killing him myself.”

Kiara sat down in her seat and propped her feet up on the desk. “I saw the footage,” she replied, “even when that Mandalorian scooped you up into his arms and carried you out of there.” 

She smiled when she saw Nella shift uncomfortably in her seat. 

“He means something to you.”

Nella sat motionless. 

“We hear you calling out for him in your sleep,” she added. She pulled up a file that displayed an image of that hard beskar-ed man. “Din Djarin from Aq Vetina. Raised as a Child of the Watch after The Clone Wars. Known Aliases - Mando or The Mandalorian. Last known location - Nevarro. Stole the asset almost a year ago after breaking a contract with us. It says here Enigma was sent after him, but she stopped checking in after a botched mission on Tatooine. Is that right? Oh, Enigma’s pay rate must have dropped substantially,” she tsked, “Marital Status - single. Seems appropriate since he has no known companions. Luckily for us, we are well aware that he’d blow up an entire outpost for you, so we have enough leverage to get the kid back from him.”

“Touch my kid, and it’ll be the last thing you ever do, Kiara,” she said through her teeth.

Kiara glared at her sister through the transparent screen. “ _Your_ kid?” she asked, genuinely interested, “Do you think the three of you are some sort of family?” She let out an evil laugh. “I guess that’s all I need to know then about Din Djarin. I can’t wait to meet him.” She turned her attention back to Din’s file and continued scanning. “It says here that you first made contact with him on Sorgan.”

Nella’s veins froze as fear spread through her body.

“I think Aunt Mera would love to see her long lost niece,” she smiled, “and if I was a betting woman, I’d say that’d be one of the first places he’d go. How else are they going to know they’d lost you after getting you back?”

“Kiara,” she begged, “leave her out of this. She doesn’t know anything!”

She stood and walked over to her sister, forcing her to stand up. “Din Djarin will be haunted by your ghost until it drives him mad, and when he’s at his weakest, I will kill him and get my asset back.”

Nella felt rage flowing through her now as she glared at her sister. Kiara might work for the Empire, but Nella was still the deadliest woman in the galaxy. “If you put so much as a scratch on his armor, I will make you wish you never found me.”

Kiara laughed. “You think my little sister scares me? Enigma? Yeah right. I taught you everything you know.”

She screamed at her sister, forcing her back away from her. “You taught me _nothing_! You betrayed your family, and I swear if you come after mine, I’ll make you wish you died with the rest of them!”

The door slid open and she felt the hot sting of electricity in her body again, dropping her to the floor. “Take her back to her cell,” Kiara ordered, “and lock it up tight.”

“Yes, Director,” the trooper replied, forcing Nella to stand as she begrudgingly walked back with him.

***

He was sitting in the hold eating with the kid when he thought he heard the faint whisper again. He had been staring at his bunk, a place where he hadn’t slept in weeks. Lately he’d been staying on the cot he’d had installed. He didn’t feel right sleeping somewhere they’d shared so intimately so many times. It pained the kid to sleep there too. He’d built a hammock for him in there, but the kid got just about as much sleep as Din. It was obvious that this loss had taken its toll on their foundling, and what was worse, Din didn’t know how to help him. He was barely handling the grief himself, and the fact he could still hear her voice calling for him made everything so much worse. So, when he heard her this time, so clearly, his heart stopped completely. She sounded like she was standing next to him. He stiffened in his seat and looked around the ship, as if trying to determine the source of her voice.

“Din,” she cried out loud, “come find me, ner kar’ta.”

She was here. She was alive and he needed to find her. “Nell?” he whispered in a cracked voice through his modulator. He didn’t want to believe it, get his hopes up, but when he looked down at the kid he saw him listening too. “Nell?” This time he said louder, standing up. He walked to the cargo hold and hit the release. Empty. “Nell!”

There was no answer. Her voice was gone, vanished into the vacuum of space, leaving him empty again. His vision blurred as he returned to his seat next to the kid, who reached out for Din. Picking him up, he cradled him against his chest, noticing the kid trying to hug him for comfort. Din pursed his lips together, trying to contain the grief before moving up to the cockpit with his ward. Right now, they were floating in space. They had a location of a Mandalorian, back on Tatooine, but Din was wrestling with the idea of returning to Sorgan first. Omera and Winta had the right to know what happened. He just didn’t think he was strong enough to tell them. Sighing, he punched in the comcode for an old friend, hoping he would take the call. Suddenly, Shan’s face appeared in the hologram. “Hey, Mando,” he said half-heartedly.

“Shan.” Din was colder than normal.

“It’s been a while,” he said.

They sat in silence for an excruciating amount of time before Din sighed and faced Shan. “I need you to meet me at these coordinates,” he said, sending them to him.

“Sorgan?” Shan asked. “What for?”

Din sighed again. “Her aunt and cousin live there.”

His eyes widened when he realized what Din had to still do. When they’d gone back to retrieve Nell’s body, they hadn’t found one. There were trails that hinted someone dragged her body out of the building, but after it left the cantina, the trail went cold. Cara had made Shan and Greef swear they wouldn’t tell Mando. She didn’t want him to stress about this while trying to take care of the kid. “If I find something, I’ll tell him myself,” she said, “but under no circumstances is he allowed to know. She is still dead until we find the body.”

Shan looked at the coordinates again, “Do you want me to do it?”

Din shook his head. “It should come from me,” he said, his voice cracked, “I just…”

He nodded. “I’ll be there, Mando.”

There was silence again. Din wanted to tell him, share that he kept hearing her voice, but he was worried Shan would find him insane. The child cooed, drawing Din’s attention away from Shan for a second. Shan cleared his throat. “Mando,” he said, “how are the two of you holding up?”

Din took a deep breath and turned back to him. “We’re fine.”

Shan rolled his eyes. “Well, I’m not,” he admitted. He knew the only way to get through to him was to continue talking about it. “I miss her.”

He continued to sit stoically as he listened. “Sometimes I think I hear her,” Shan added.

This caught Din’s attention. “Wait,” he said, “you do?”

Shan nodded. “Yeah. I’ll be down in the hold and I’ll hear her yelling at me from her room or laughing at something dumb I’ve said,” he continued.

“Do you ever hear her like she’s right next to you?” he asked, “Like she’s crying for help?”

Din’s question surprised Shan. “Do you?” he cautiously asked.

His head dropped. “I’m not hearing things, Shan,” he argued, “the kid hears it too.” He glanced back up to Shan who was waiting for him to finish. “She’s crying out in pain, begging for me to help her. I hear her plain as day.”

“Mando,” he breathed, “that’s impossible. How can-”

“I don’t know,” he growled, “but it’s driving me crazy. Do you know how hard it is to move on when I keep hearing her voice and feeling her presence every day? It’s like she’s still here but I can’t see or feel her?”

Shan sighed and leaned back in his chair. “Do you think maybe it’s because the two of you were so close-”

“I don’t know,” he replied, “but I’m not-” he paused and straightened his posture. “I’ll see you on Sorgan.”

“Mando,” he said, “You’re not okay. You need to talk about this.”

“See you on Sorgan, Shan,” he said, flipping the channel off. 

Shan’s hologram disappeared and Din spun around to look at the kid. He was holding the little ball he loved to play with, but he was staring at it with the same sad expression he’d had earlier. Din wished he could make it better for the kid. He could handle living with this grief, but the kid deserved better. He took solace in the fact that they would be surrounded by family soon and the kid would be distracted for a bit. Family. He huffed to himself. Never before had he had a home outside of this ship, and thanks to Nella, Sorgan had quickly become a potential home for him; Omera and Winta his family. He’d bought a small plot of land just outside of the town for him and Nella the last time they were there. He planned on surprising her with it once they’d taken care of the Client, and there was a part of him that didn’t want to give it up. She’d want him to settle there when this was all over. But he couldn’t live there. Not without her. There was no reason to do that when he had no one to share it with. 

He spun around and punched in the coordinates for Sorgan and sighed. It was time for him to face Omera and tell her he’d failed her. He failed to protect her like he promised and lost the only woman he’d ever really loved.

**Translations**

  * _Cyar’ika - Sweetheart_
  * _Ner Kar’ta - My Heart_




End file.
